Dear World, Love Clara
by Garmonbozia
Summary: Ladies and gentlemen, Clara Oswin Oswald is trapped! She's on top of a Tardis in Trafalgar Square with a very angry and very rant-y Doctor! He's not going to stop until he hears this year's Children In Need appeal is going INCREDIBLY WELL! Help Clara! Help the Doctor! Help Children In Need! [My annual donation story. PUDSEY NEEDS THE WHOVIANS!]
1. Chapter 1

Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially declaring a state of emergency.

I don't know if I'm actually allowed to declare a state of emergency. I'm not really anybody, after all. He could declare a state of emergency. He _is_ a state of emergency. He lands on a planet and it's automatic state of emergency time. So, if you think about it, poor old Earth is already in a state of emergency, and I'm just declaring it. I'm saying it out loud. I'm letting you know.

Let an announcement be made. Let them take it to the corners of every continent so that everybody can know.

"_Ladies and gentlemen of Earth, you are in a state of emergency. Sorry about that, just thought I'd let you know. Lots of love, Clara Oswin Oswald._

_P.S. Sorry."_

Really. I'm extra specially sorry. Because this is, actually, little bit, not much, enough-to-apologize-for-but-not-enough-to-be-punis hed-for, my fault.

I suppose you've heard by now. It's all over Youtube. It's a Facebook sensation. Twitter's gone mad. Tumblr _did_ go mad. Then it went so mad it died. There are news helicopters over us now so I'm assuming everybody's seen it that way.

In case you haven't, it's the Doctor. He's gone a bit…

Well. You know.

He gets this way sometimes. Usually it's when something awful has happened in some distant galaxy. Alien dictators or great wars or big explosions or wicked monsters. That kind of thing. He'll try and help. He'll try and do something about it.

But if he can't, well….

I mean, I'm sure you've seen it but… Oh, God, I think I broke him.

See, he came to get me. Something about Stryz-Gar Nebula and an invasion and…? I don't know. He didn't finish what he was saying. I wasn't at home, see? I was with Angie and Artie, at school. They were having a fundraiser, for Children in Need? All the kids dressed up, selling buns, having little parties. And me and some of the mums and dads were out the front shaking buckets for collection.

But it wasn't going very well.

A lot of people were just walking past. And they were looking at us like… like an annoyance. Like we were standing with our hands out. Like it was selfish. People didn't seem to have time to scrape some change out of their pockets and toss it in the bloody bucket.

Not that I as getting annoyed or anything.

Not that the reason I didn't hear the Tardis when it landed, making that big inny-outy noise that it makes, as though the universe was breathing, was that I was getting a bit annoyed. Don't get me wrong, it's a big noise. You really need to be distracted, if you're going to miss it. It's a huge noise. I think everyone who _wasn't_ me was looking round to see what the noise was.

But it's not because I was….

Oh alright, I was _raging_. Someone had just dropped their foil-wrapped chewing gum into my bucket.

And as the Doctor crept up from behind, intending to surprise me, I was shouting down the street after this hopeless excuse for a human.

The Doctor wouldn't like me using language like that. He likes humans, he thinks were great and good and generous and charitable and fantastic. Which for the most part we are but there was _chewing gum_ in my _bucket_! He'd forgive me.

Maybe not for the language I was _actually_ using, and outside a school. But as I said, I was annoyed.

And as I said, he was creeping up on me. If I'd known he was there I might have protected his delicate sensibilities. Then again, maybe not. Chewing gum. Bucket. I might have mentioned that. I'm over it now. Totally over it.

It was green, ladies and gentlemen. But I'm over it.

Then the Doctor was right at my shoulder and I jumped.

"Oh!" I cried. "Sorry." Sorry I hadn't noticed him. Sorry he'd seen me all riled up like that.

And now Sorry to you, people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, because it was clear that he was not happy. Really, really not happy. He was white, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers, pale with rage, and shaking with it too.

He looked me over, with my Pudsey hairband on and the pawprints painted on my face. "It's Children In Need, today?" His voice. I've _never_ heard him like that. And I've been with him in some dark, dark moments, but never like that. He sounded lethal.

"Yes." It was all I could do to eke out that tiny answer.

"And that is a collection bucket," he said, "for Children In Need?" He was beginning to take the screwdriver out of his pocket.

"Yes," I replied.

"And there is a wad of fresh, still sticky chewing gum, Clara, in your bucket."

He pointed the sonic down the street. I, personally, didn't see anything happen. I'm sure this had _nothing_ to do with the missing manhole cover, or the nasty fall into raw sewage taken by the young man I'd just been shouting at. That's not his style. Not at all.

Then again, neither is what he's doing now.

This is the part that's making the news. You see, after he'd put away the sonic, he dragged me to the Tardis with him. We are now _on top _of the Tardis. The Tardis herself is _on top_ of the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square.

By some sonic magic, he has turned off all the streetlights but the ones nearest us. On a dark November night, in the middle of London, that's quite a spotlight. He has amplified his voice, not only in the square but over every announcement system in the capital.

May I just take this opportunity to apologize in particular to those trying to find out where that Tube train in front of them is going.

I've been keeping up with the updates and the general theme is disruption. Lots of disruption. Lots of things being disrupted, because all people can hear is the Doctor's voice.

He's making a speech. This is what I started to tell you before. When he can't defeat a monster or stop some cataclysm with his original plan, he starts to make a speech. Surely you've noticed this? Usually it's a play for time, until he has a better idea.

That's why I'm declaring a state of emergency. This one seems different. This time, I think he's talking because this _is_ the plan. To make as many people as possible listen. This time, the speech is the first thing to happen.

But, my God, he's been going four hours now, and _no_ sign of stopping.

Youtube favourites include the minutes twenty-to-twenty-eight (also known as the 'Stuff That Children In Need Can Provide To Community Centres' segment), and minutes one-hundred-and-eight to one-hundred-and-eighteen (the "There Are More Than 63 Million People In This Country, And If Everyone Gave A Penny" segment - I like that one. I think that's a really good point to raise, don't you?)

Actually, he's raising a lot of good points. But I really do think that life in the city should be able to go on, don't you?

I'm trying to help. I'm up here with him – no choice, can't get down – but I think, if I could only show him how well the appeal is doing this year, maybe he'll calm down?

So I used the console. Got in touch with some of his friends about how to do it. And Jenny was able to tell me a very interesting story about last year. Apparently, last year, The Doctor and his wife were locked out of Television Centre when the Children In Need appeal was in dire peril? And a nice girl called Sally on a site called Fanfiction-dot-net (never heard of it, news to me, must have a look round while I'm here…) let him use her account to reach an audience.

And the agreement was that, for every 'favourite' or 'review' or 'follow' (help? Is this right? I'm only repeating what Jenny told me) that this lovely girl will donate one pound to Children In Need on your behalf.

And I think if I could just do that, and try this, and show him that people are good, and that something came of it?

I don't know, I think he might just stop talking.

Please. I'm stuck on top of a Tardis with a raving, well-meaning madman in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Help me.

I mean, help Pudsey and all the kids and all the amazing projects funded by Children In Need, but please, God, please help me, he's giving me a bloody earache and I'm not sure how Angie and Artie got home today. Please. Please help me.

Yours, sincerely,

Clara Oswin Oswald.

[Hey, folks. Sal here. I know I haven't been on site for a while, but this is important to me. Donate without costing yourself a penny. This will run until tomorrow night before I make the donation. C.I.N. is an incredible charity with amazing rewards and projects (and one delightful supporter currently holding London hostage!) Help him, help me, and help Clara before she loses her mind. All my hearts – Sal.]


	2. Chapter 2

…Clara says I have to apologize.

She's wrong. Even if she was right, Clara isn't somebody who gets to tell me to apologize. Not very many people get to tell me to apologize for anything and Clara is not one of them.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, would you believe, she's telling me to _get on with it_! As though she had that right too!

_Get on with it_, she's saying, _and apologize_!

Apologize for what, I ask you!? Apologize for rousing the slumbering masses out of their contented apathy? Apologize for railing against the _chewing-gum-spitters_ of contemporary Britain? Apologize for _doing something_, where so many others might have sat around and sighed about how awful it was and not actually gotten naff all done? Apologize for that, Miss Oswald?

Oh. No. She says she means for me to apologize for:

- Turning out most of the lights in London for more than two days

- Talking over every tannoy in said-city for said-length of time

- Being, and I quote, 'a major annoyance and earache' for aforementioned length of time at aforementioned location.

Which would make a lot of sense. Those are all things I would want very much and very deeply to apologize for. Those are awful things to have done!

Trouble is, Clara, I didn't do _any_ of those things.

For starters, I turned out less than one percent of the lights in London. This is not a majority. This is barely even a minority. This doesn't even feature. One percent. It is, quite literally, next to nothing. _And even if it _had _been _'most of the lights', it was for a good cause! We needed a spotlight. And as those tannoys, well, people needed to hear me. There's only so loud one can shout. And it's very loud, but it didn't carry that far down off the Fourth Plinth!

Oh.

If there's one apology I should make, it's to whoever created the large art installation that I landed the Tardis on. Sorry. Didn't know until we took off again and all the bits started falling off the bottom. Sorry for that. Don't mind apologizing for that.

What was I talking about?

Oh, yes! Tannoys! Public announcement systems! Well, Clara, I'm afraid I must correct you again. It was _not_ every tannoy in said-city.

I left the hospitals, police stations and fire stations. I'm not a complete monster. I did, however, tune the radios at all those professional places to what I was saying so they wouldn't miss it if there was nothing going on.

And as to being _a major annoyance_… Well, frankly, Miss Oswald, I am _offended_. And very disappointed in you. How could you be annoyed by the soaring rhetoric of an outraged soul?! Why, you yourself were outraged when I found you, bellowing like a bull outside that school gate!

For the benefit of our younger and more sensitive readers, I shall remove some of the more choice and colourful language from my repetitions, but I believe it went something like this –

"You terrible, narrow-minded _person,_ you!" You understand, Miss Oswald here was addressing our gum-smacking friend. "You ought to be sent to a horrid place run by unsavoury sorts who would…" How to rephrase this… Hm…

'Tickle you senseless with feather dusters'? 'Feed you molten cream jelly through second-hand nasal straws'? 'Make you eat baked beans with slices of pear three times a day for a year'?

Certainly I can't tell you what she _actually_ suggested be inserted into where…

Anyway, you get the picture. And Clara has the nerve to say that I was an annoyance. I had an _effect_. In fact, due to my annual charity appeal via this website, I was able to raise the grand sum of twenty-four whole pounds.

…That doesn't sound like much, does it?

But when you think about it, that's the electricity for eight sensory sessions to benefit an autistic child. It's three whole classes of literacy improvement games. Two punch bags at a boxing club in an inner city. Ten or twelve meals at a shelter for homeless teens. That's the subsidy for some academic casualty to attend a confidence-building event and have major fun for a weekend. That pays the counsellor who can help bereaved children for a few hours.

Twenty-four pounds isn't a lot, but it can do _untold_ things. And that big yellow bear that my wife loved so dearly, he knows exactly where that money is needed.

Speaking of the old ball-and-chain, bless her heart, I shan't disappoint her. I will, of course, be matching that lovely Miss Garmonbozia's kind donation. And if any of you missed this original charity drive, well….

Well, how's this? I'll add that on. So there'll be forty-eight pounds going to Pudsey for definite – what the hell, call it fifty, nice round number – and if any of you want to honour the original agreement now, well, I'll add that on too.

How's that, Clara? Happy now? What're you tapping your foot for?

Clara? Why, Clara, you look quite as though you might punch me! What've I done?

Refused to apologize? No. I explained, didn't I? I have nothing to apologize for. Except the art installation incident and I did apologize for that.

Took the credit? Clara, I don't know what you mean! This is my third year running appealing to the lovely Fanfiction people. It's a thing. I'm so used to it I don't even remember posting an appeal this year! Isn't that wonderful? It just shows how deeply charity runs. It's part of me, deep in my heart. It's just a lovely thing to know, isn't it?

Clara?

Clara, take that look off your face. Clara, why are you bracing yourself? Clara, you're concentrating very hard on my nose, you know. Clara, why are you rearing back as though you wanted to headb- Aargh!

Ow…

Charity hurts, ladies and gentlemen. I'm only trying to be nice. While I deal with a needlessly irate companion, and a terribly sore nose that may be bleeding, please, please take advantage of this last opportunity to help me give. We're doing incredible good together, me and Pudsey.

_And young ladies with violent minds and anger management issues are not helping at all!_


End file.
